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TheStar.com – Business – Canadians’ help sought for a green desert oasis
The first city in the world likely to emit zero carbon and generate zero waste is, ironically, likely going to be in a country that gets most of its revenues from the sale of oil and gas.
Three years ago Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, came up with a grand plan. The country is rolling in petrodollars, which make up more than two-thirds of its gross domestic product. So it decided it would commit $22 billion (U.S.) toward an ambitious effort to diversify the economy, by building a green city from scratch in the middle of the desert.
Masdar City, as it’s called, will be small at about six square kilometres, and only 50,000 or so people are expected to live within its perimeter wall. But it has big vision. It will have its own university, and will be the headquarters to the newly created International Renewable Energy Agency (which Canada, by the way, refuses to join).
Masdar will also be a cleantech mecca.
The city will be powered largely by solar, wind and geothermal power, starting with a 50-megawatt solar power plant that will supply energy for construction.
A wind farm will be built outside the city’s walls and eventually, as buildings emerge, they will have solar panels on their rooftops. Some of this renewable power will be used to generate and store hydrogen, which will be used as an emission-free fuel for what’s expected to be the world’s largest hydrogen power plant.
Solar will power a desalination plant that will turn salt water into drinking water, which will be recycled where possible or used as grey water for irrigating crops or flushing toilets.
High-tech incineration technologies will be used to turn waste into energy.
Vehicles will also be banned within city walls. Instead, residents and workers will have to rely on light-rail transit and electric-powered personal transportation systems, those driverless pods you see in sci-fi movies like Blade Runner, Minority Report and – I’m aging myself now – Logan’s Run.
The entire construction effort is being overseen by Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, and the first neighbourhood in Masdar is expected to be finished in 2013.
And you thought Bramalea was a planned city.
Why bring up something happening more than 10,000 kilometres away?
Last week a delegation of Masdar City executives flew into Toronto at the invitation of Sandra Pupatello, Ontario’s minister of economic development and trade. They spent two days meeting clean technology, engineering and urban design companies from Ontario and the rest of Canada.
Dr. Nawal Al-Hosany, associate director of sustainability at Masdar City, said in an interview that Masdar needs access to the latest technologies if it is to achieve its mission. That won’t come from Abu Dhabi alone.
“This is why we seek partnerships,” she said. “We’re looking at opportunities to investigate what’s happening everywhere in the world.
“We believe there are lots of opportunities in Canada.”
She called the meetings “fruitful,” and said she expects there will be some serious business relationships formed.
“You have four senior members of Masdar here, so we’re definitely not here to waste the company’s money.”
Masdar, it should be clear, isn’t just a grand idea on paper. Construction has already started. In June, Abu Dhabi-based Enviromena Power Systems completed a 10-megawatt solar power farm that spans 22 hectares and consists of 87,777 solar photovoltaic modules. So far it takes the prize as the largest solar power plant in the Middle East and North Africa.
Last year, Burnaby, B.C.-based solar lighting company Carmanah Technologies signed a deal that will see Enviromena distribute its products throughout the Middle East, so already the Masdar initiative is having an impact on Canadian companies.
“Masdar is really seen as a test bed for these technologies,” said Kevin Healy, who heads up marketing for Masdar City.
Joseph Dableh, president and chief executive of Oakville-based intelligent lighting company Fifth Light Technology, attended one of the sessions with Al-Hosany and her team and managed to make an impression.
Fifth Light has developed technology that allows fluorescent lighting in buildings to be dimmed in a way that saves energy, extends the life of the lights, and in a way that’s hardly noticeable to the naked eye.
Masdar, said Dableh, is a perfect match for his technology.
“They have expressed serious interest and clearly stated that this is exactly what they are hoping to acquire. I had three one-to-one meetings with them and it was agreed to follow up.”
It’s great news for a promising Canadian company, even if it takes going to a desert in the Middle East for some well-deserved exposure.
Urine turned into hydrogen fuel 02 July 2009
US researchers have developed an efficient way of producing hydrogen from urine – a feat that could not only fuel the cars of the future, but could also help clean up municipal wastewater.
Using hydrogen to power cars has become an increasingly attractive transportation fuel, as the only emission produced is water – but a major stumbling block is the lack of a cheap, renewable source of the fuel. Gerardine Botte of Ohio University may now have found the answer, using an electrolytic approach to produce hydrogen from urine – the most abundant waste on Earth – at a fraction of the cost of producing hydrogen from water. Botte says the idea came to her several years ago at a conference on fuel cells, where they were discussing how to turn clean water into clean power. ‘I wondered how we could do this better,’ she adds – so started looking at waste streams as a better source of molecules from which to produce hydrogen.
Urine’s major constituent is urea, which incorporates four hydrogen atoms per molecule – importantly, less tightly bonded than the hydrogen atoms in water molecules. Botte used electrolysis to break the molecule apart, developing an inexpensive new nickel-based electrode to selectively and efficiently oxidise the urea. To break the molecule down, a voltage of 0.37V needs to be applied across the cell – much less than the 1.23V needed to split water. Electrolysis breaks down the urea, releasing hydrogen ‘During the electrochemical process the urea gets adsorbed on to the nickel electrode surface, which passes the electrons needed to break up the molecule,’ Botte told Chemistry World. Pure hydrogen is evolved at the cathode, while nitrogen plus a trace of oxygen and hydrogen were collected at the anode. While carbon dioxide is generated during the reaction, none is found in the collected gasses as it reacts with the potassium hydroxide in the solution to form potassium carbonate.
According to Botte, currently available processes that can remove urine from water are expensive and inefficient. Urea naturally hydrolyses into ammonia before generating gas phase ammonia emissions. These emissions lead to the formation of ammonium sulphate and nitrate particulates in the air, which cause a variety of health problems including chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks and premature death. The group are currently conducting long term stability studies on their electrolysis systems, as well as conducting computational experiments to better understand the mechanisms at work.
Botte believes the technology could be easily scaled-up to generate hydrogen while cleaning up the effluent from sewage plants. ‘We do not need to reinvent the wheel as there are already electrolysers being used in different applications.’ She believes the only the thing that would hamper the process would be the presence of a lot of salt.
Bruce Logan, an expert in energy generation from wastewater and director of Pennsylvania State University’s H2E Center and Engineering Environmental Institute, applauded Botte’s efforts in developing a more energy efficient way of producing hydrogen than splitting water. However, he did caution that urea gets converted very quickly into ammonia by bacteria, which could limit the usefulness of the technique. However, Logan does feel that it would be a good idea to start saving up our urine – although not for the hydrogen. ‘You have to remember about the P [phosphorus] in pee – globally we need to start thinking about conserving phosphorus for fertiliser, because, just like oil, one day the deposits are all going to run out and we need to start building phosphorus recycling into our infrastructure,’ he says.
References: B K Boggs, R L King and G G Botte, Chem. Commun., 2009, DOI: 10.1039/b905974a
Canadians have a great deal to celebrate when it concerns their environment, write Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute and Ben Eisen of the Frontier Center for Public Policy. Over the past 30 years, Canada has cleaned up its air and water, preserved ecosystems and timberlands and protected the soils, while simultaneously sustaining strong economic growth. Of course, there is still more that can be done, but Canada is well on the way toward environmental sustainability, they say.
The report, The Environmental State of Canada–30 years of Progress, was authored by Frontier advisor Kenneth Green (D. Env.), and Frontier analyst Ben Eisen (M.P.P.). Some of the findings from include:
• On air pollution: levels of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide are much lower in Canadian towns and cities than they were just a few decades ago. For readings of ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter, there has been neither a measurable drop nor a measurable increase since the early 1990s.
• On greenhouse gas emissions, Canada’s emissions have increased by over 20 per cent since 1990. However, greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP (which accounts for population an economic growth and is measured as GHG emissions per unit of economic productivity) dropped 18 per cent in real (inflation-adjusted) terms between 1990 and 2005.
• On freshwater quality, more than twice as many monitored sites fell into one of the top two designations–good and excellent, than fell into one of the bottom two designations (marginal and poor).
Canada’s record in this area is also strong compared with its peer countries. Canada has the second-highest level of water quality among G8 countries, behind only Italy.
• On freshwater withdrawals, Canada’s NAFTA trading partners, the United States and Mexico, withdraw 17 per cent and 19 per cent respectively of their renewable fresh water each year, Canada withdraws just 1.6 per cent of its resources — a very sustainable level–and could afford to share fresh water with countries around the world which are water-poor and which suffer from environmental health problems as a result;
For further conservation measures in Canada however, water pricing should be introduced.
• Canadian soil quality has improved dramatically in recent years. Whereas in the early 1980s, Canada experienced a significant annual net loss in the measurement of soil organic carbon, by the early 2000s, Canada enjoyed large annual net gains.
The percentage of cropland designated by the federal government as being at very low risk of wind erosion (the lowest possible designation) reached 86 per cent in 2001, up from 72 per cent in 1981.
• On ecosystem conservation, In 1989, just three per cent of Canada’s land area was protected by legislation. By 2003, that number rose to 8.4 per cent.
• On forestry, throughout the past decade, Canada’s total forest cover has held steadily at approximately 310-million acres, or 34 per cent of Canada’s land mass.
Because I have recently focused much of my research on the Water and Wastewater sector in Canada, I have created another blog to share this specific information with a broader community. The new blog, called Water in the Works, is hosted by wordpress at waterintheworks.wordpress.com . Stop in sometime and say hi 
Michelle
Link Water, Energy and Climate in Global Talks, Business Urges
Istanbul, 19 March 2009 – Business leaders from some of the world’s biggest companies today called for water, energy and climate change to be linked in global negotiations, such as the international climate talks due to culminate in Copenhagen in December.
The business leaders were speaking at the launch of a report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul. The forum is expected to produce a ministerial statement calling for proactive policies on water issues.
“Water is everybody’s business. It is used to generate energy, and energy is used to provide water. Climate change will affect the use and availability of both. It is important that we get the policies right,” said Björn Stigson, president of the WBCSD.
“The World Water Forum in Istanbul has done a lot to focus attention on water, energy and climate change. But there is still a significant gap in addressing all three together at a global level. We must link them in the climate negotiations to have any real hope of finding a solution.”
The report, Water, Energy and Climate Change: A contribution from the business community ( 1.8 MB), says water, energy and climate change are inextricably linked.
“Water plays a central role in many of the world’s most pressing issues, among them climate change, energy security and the need to spur economic growth. The time has passed for commitment alone – we must act,” said Steve R. Loranger, CEO of ITT Corporation and co-chair of the WBCSD Water Project.
The paper lists five important policy recommendations from business to climate negotiators and policy-makers. These are:
- Provide reliable climate change risk data, models and analysis tools.
- Integrate water and energy efficiency in measurement tools and policy.
- Bring water issues into the mainstream, and ensure that water authorities and institutions have staff trained to deliver common management practices, education and awareness raising.
- Integrate and value ecosystem services (the benefits that nature provides to society, such as water and forest products) into cross-border decision-making.
- Encourage best practice through innovation, appropriate solutions and community engagement.
It also includes 25 case studies showing how business is already linking water, energy and climate across their operations.
Drinking Water And Hydroelectric Power – Binding The Common Future Of Canada And USA
Hydroelectric power produced in Canada – generally known there as simply “hydro” – is another water-created, and shared resource of increasing importance to Canada and the US Northeast. DailyTech reports that much of 8 Terawatt-hours (1550 MW) of new Canadian “hydro” could soon be on its way to New England and to New York State, specifically. (1550 MW of hydroelectric capacity is roughly the equivalent of what a thousand new top-of-the-line wind turbines would be rated at, cumulatively.
Notably, export of the new green, hydroelectric power to the USA, from Canada, will be encouraged by renewable energy targets, as included in the present energy bill being considered in the US Congress.
Much of the water flowing through the turbines at Niagara Falls originates from Canadian watersheds. That water-driven source has, historically, supplied a great deal of green power to the US, and will continue to do so.
Should the various offshore wind farms being proposed for Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan be completed, their power output will be created by the wide open spaces (wind fetch) offered by the shared water resource
Contrast the above, with how water is shared – or rather how it is not shared – between Mexico and the USA. What the US Southwest and Mexico have in common for optimal green power generation performance is the sun, not water: the opposite of Canada and the US Northeast. One big difference between these two regions is that the southwest’s common solar resources need no international contracts or treaties to manage them, whereas in the other instance, for shared water and power, both are needed. The other difference between the regions, relative to green power and economic development, is that it is extremely unlikely that investors would build a concentrated solar power plant in Mexico to export electricity to the USA.
From the Economist via LN Publisher – April 9, 2009
Water shortages are a growing problem, but not for the reasons most people think
THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.
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Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.
The first is demography. Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population rose from 3 billion to 6.5 billion, water use roughly trebled. On current estimates, the population is likely to rise by a further 2 billion by 2025 and by 3 billion by 2050. Demand for water will rise accordingly.
Or rather, by more. Possibly a lot more. It is not the absolute number of people that makes the biggest difference to water use but changing habits and diet. Diet matters more than any single factor because agriculture is the modern Agasthya, the mythical Indian giant who drank the seas dry. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world’s water; industry uses less than a fifth and domestic or municipal use accounts for a mere tenth.
The other long-term trend affecting water is climate change. There is growing evidence that global warming is speeding up the hydrologic cycle–that is, the rate at which water evaporates and falls again as rain or snow. This higher rate seems to make wet regions more sodden, and arid ones drier. It brings longer droughts between more intense periods of rain.
Climate change has three big implications for water use. First, it changes the way plants grow. Trees, for example, react to downpours with a spurt of growth. During the longer droughts that follow, the extra biomass then dries up so that if lightning strikes, forests burn more spectacularly. Similarly crops grow too fast, then wilt.
Second, climate change increases problems of water management. Larger floods overwhelm existing controls. Reservoirs do not store enough to get people or plants through longer droughts. In addition, global warming melts glaciers and causes snow to fall as rain. Since snow and ice are natural regulators, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, countries are swinging more violently between flood and drought. That is one big reason why dams, once a dirty word in development, have been making a comeback, especially in African countries with plenty of water but no storage capacity. The number of large dams (more than 15 metres high) has been increasing and the order books of dam builders are bulging.
Third, climate change has persuaded western governments to subsidise biofuels, which could prove as big a disaster for water as they already have been for food. At the moment, about 2% of irrigated water is used to grow crops for energy, or 44km3. But if all the national plans and policies to increase biofuels were to be implemented, reckons the UN, they would require an extra 180km3 of water. Though small compared with the increase required to feed the additional 2 billion people, the biofuels’ premium is still substantial.
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The world might also be better off, at least in terms of water, if trade patterns more closely reflected the amount of water embedded in traded goods (a concept called “virtual water” invented by Tony Allan of King’s College London). Some benign effects happen already: Mexico imports cereals from America which use 7 billion cubic metres (m{+3}) of water. If it grew these cereals itself, it would use 16 billion m{+3}, so trade “saves” 9 billion m{+3} of water. But such beneficial exchanges occur more by chance than design. Because most water use is not measured, let alone priced, trade rarely reflects water scarcities.
Water is rarely priced in ways that reflect supply and demand. Usually, water pricing simply means that city dwellers pay for the cost of the pipes that transport it and the sewerage plants that clean it.
Basic information about who uses how much water is lacking. Rainwater and river flows can be measured with some accuracy. But the amount pumped out of lakes is a matter of guesswork and information on how much is taken from underground aquifers is almost completely lacking.
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As is often the way, business is ahead of governments in getting to grips with waste. Big drinks companies such as Coca Cola have set themselves targets to reduce the amount of water they use in making their products (in Coke’s case, by 20% by 2012). The Nature Conservancy, an ecologically-minded NGO, is working on a certification plan which aims to give companies and businesses seals of approval (a bit like the Fairtrade symbol) according to how efficiently they use water. The plan is supposed to get going in 2010. That sort of thing is a good start, but just one step in a long process that has barely begun.
World Water Week demands halt to food wastage
EurActiv.com, 25 August 2008 – Scientists and experts from around the world have warned that global food wastage must be halved by 2025 to meet the challenges of feeding the rapidly-growing population and preserving global water supplies.
Continued high rates of food overproduction and waste will not only cause food but also water shortages, according to a report by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
The study, entitled ‘Saving Water: From Field to Fork – Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain’, was presented during World Water Week, which wrapped up on 22 August in Stockholm.
It warns that “tremendous quantities of food are discarded in processing, transport, supermarkets and people’s kitchens,” adding: “This wasted food is also wasted water.” In the US, up to 30% of food, worth some $48.3 billion, is thrown away each year, it notes, pointing to similar levels of waste in Europe.
“That’s like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion litres of water into the garbage can – enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people,” the report laments.
Global food needs are expected to roughly double by 2050. At the same time, dwindling oil reserves and increasing concerns about climate change are leading countries to invest heavily in biomass – meaning land for food production is also getting scarcer. What’s more, as countries like China and India get richer, demand for more water-intensive agricultural products, such as beef and bioenergy, is increasing.
Food prices have already begun to soar in recent months, causing riots in a number of poor countries, including Haïti, Mexico, Egypt, Morocco and Senegal. Furthermore, an estimated 1.2 billion people already live in areas where there is not enough water to meet demand, causing death, illness and disease related to bad sanitation.
“Weak policy, poor management, increasing waste and exploding water demands are pushing the planet towards the tipping point of global water crisis,” warned the report, calling on governments to place an effective water-saving strategy, requiring that food wastage be minimised, firmly on the political agenda.
Links
International organizations
- World Water Week: Water and Sanitation Looms Behind Food, Energy and Climate Crisis, Concludes World Water Week (22 August 2008)
- World Water Week: 50 Percent of Food is Wasted Causing Water, Food and Hunger Crisis, Says SIWI, FAO and IWMI (21 August 2008)
Press articles
- AFP: Wasted food draining the world of water, experts say
- International Herald Tribune: Water experts urge major cuts in food waste
Report Covers the Good and Bad in Agriculture Trends
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, 24 July 2008 – Changing diets around the world, loss of farmable land and water shortages are some of the main agricultural concerns highlighted in a new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
The group explains current and future issues in “Agricultural Ecosystems: Facts & Trends,” written in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (Link to the pdf)
The challenges facing agricultural ecosystems can have worldwide effects on food production and availability. The report acts a primer of what the main issues are, and what industry, businesses, government and organizations can do or support.
Around the world, soil and farmland is being lost or restricted as populations grow and through erosion and desertification. While some damage is irreversible, other areas can be revived with erosion control, terracing and physical and vegetation barriers.
Better crop and water management techniques have also been developed that reduce water needs and lower carbon dioxide emissions from agriculture. Conservation tillage is one method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from soil being farmed, but the largest agricultural CO2 emissions come from converting forests and long-term grasslands to agriculture, a practice that has been linked to making room for more food crops as well as biofuel crops.
Most other agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are from fertilizer and livestock, which produce methane. A variety of companies have been integrating recovered methane from agriculture or landfills into their operations, turning the gas into power.
The report’s authors include some tidbits about food choices for readers to mull over, pointing out the production of meat, milk, sugar, oils and vegetables uses more water than production of cereals. As countries get wealthier, their per capita calorie intake also increases. Along with that, as richer countries consume more fruits and vegetable, that leads to fewer calories being produced per hectare of land.
Via: Globe-NET
29 May 2008 – Agricultural run-offs containing fertilizers, animal wastes and pesticides are infecting rivers and water courses with blue-green algal blooms and toxic chemicals. While the problem is particularly evident in developing countries – Canada, Australia and the United States contain some of the world’s most polluted rivers, and poor agricultural practices are the root cause.
Almost one-fifth of the world’s population lacks consistent access to clean water says the United Nations Environment Program, and the problem is being made worse by the improper farming practices – particularly in developing countries where excessive use of fertilizers are needed to feed rapidly expanding populations.
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Canada has a large number of river systems that are highly polluted in part due to agriculture. On the West coast, pollution in both Alberta and BC is affecting Chinook salmon populations, a commercial species. In Eastern Canada Quebec is home to 13 of the nation’s most polluted rivers each of which run through the heart of the province’s agricultural region.
According to Monique Boily, a biology professor and environmental toxicologist at the Université du Québec à Montréal, long-term pollution has made the water unfit for consumption.
“We are talking about an extremely stressed environment … in the case of some of the tributaries, we use the term ‘river’ out of habit or convenience, in some cases it’s more like an open sewer,” said Boily of the Yamaska watershed, the most polluted river system in Canada.
What are the solutions?
Many agricultural experts are suggesting new farming techniques to help limit the amount of agricultural run-off entering river systems, such as the ‘no-till’ technique. According to research conducted by the Thomas Jefferson Institute, ‘no-till’ farming, a process that eliminates the churning of soil, reduces the movement of silt into watersheds by an estimated 95%. Because no-till doesn’t disturb the soil surface, phosphorous and nitrogen fertilizers, which reside within the top six inches of the soil, are not washed into streams and rivers. Read the rest of the article
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